The Moz Blog

You Asked, I Answered - Q&A from "You Probably Think This Citation Source Is About You, Don't You?"

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community.The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not
reflect the views of Moz.

First off, thank you to everyone who attended
my Mozinar last week! I always find the Q&A portion of my talks to be the best part, and this blog post is going to answer all those questions that I either wasn't able to address or where I wanted to provide more information.

If your question still isn't answered, please leave a comment below and I'll do my best to help you out!

Basically, it's your business information (name, address, phone - the "NAP") on other websites. It doesn't need to include a link to your website, but it helps.

2. How long until Microformat/structured markup will matter for citations?

I think it already matters. I recommend using structured data on your own site, and other sites (such as Yelp, Yellow Pages) already do, although you don't have as much control over how it looks, for obvious reasons. If the site that you're placing the citation on allows for microformats, go for it!

3. Couldn't citations on sites such as YouTube and Flickr be flagged as spam?

Only if you're being spammy in your citation building. If the photo or video could contain a relevant address, I don't see an issue. For example, if the photo or video was taken at your business, then you're just saying (with a full NAP) where the photo or video was taken! I can't see how that would be considered spam - it's relevant information for the visitor.

4. How can local citations help if you are a company looking to be seen nationally not just locally?

I think that companies who are focusing on national strategies need to consider what portion of that is actually a local search. With the buy local movement, potential clients could be looking locally first for what you do, even if it's a service that can be provided across the country.

5. What if you use a virtual office?

Do you do work there? Could clients visit you there? Then you can use it as a real address. Be careful, though - changing addresses is a lot of work, so make sure that you and the virtual office provider are in it for the long haul. You'll also need to ensure that you have a unique phone number so that Google doesn't confuse you with the other businesses using that address.

One big no-no is using a PO Box as an address, even if it looks real, like from a UPS Store. The rule of thumb is "could people come to your location?" If they can't, don't use it as an address.

6. Any recommendations if your business is about to change offices?

Start finding all your citations now and get all your log ins ready in order to make updating easier. The moment you have the ability to receive mail at the new address, start making the changes. I'd also recommend reviewing
getlisted.org's information about local search data providers, as this can help prioritize your efforts.

7. What about using different trackable numbers across different citations? Likewise dynamic numbers on your website?

Don't. The canonical information is Name, Address, Phone, so it's key to have a single phone number for all your citation data. I know this makes it harder for you to determine where a lead comes from, but you could try a coupon code or similar to track the call.

As for your website, avoid using dynamic numbers in content that's indexed. If you're using PPC, you can use dynamic numbers but make sure that your landing pages aren't indexed.

8. What would this look like for an organization with 500+ locations?

It's still a lot of work. I know that if you have that many locations, you're looking for a way to make that scalable. I recommend recruiting your local representatives - store managers, franchisees, owners - and working with them on these initiatives. Many times, they're already involved in organizations, sponsorships, and other good causes that are great for local citations - they're just not sharing that information as there isn't a good way to make your head office aware of it. Get them invested in what you're doing and explain to them why and how it will help grow their business.

9. I'm changing my website name to a new one, will I lose all my rankings?

11. How do you go about local search when you have multiple locations for the same company in the same city? For example, if you have both a retail store and a distribution/pickup centre in the same city?

If you want actual people to go to the retail store before they buy anything, then that's the location you'll be working on, not the distribution centre.

If your business has several retail locations in the same city, then I'd recommend treating them all equally as far as citation work is concerned. One thing you can do is find out if the locations are in a named neighbourhood. If it's a large city, people will often search by neighbourhood, such as "snow tires Edmonton downtown" or "snow tires Bonnie Doon" (a neighbourhood in Edmonton). Google will usually figure out what you mean. I'd recommend doing a few test searches with neighbourhood names and see what comes up.

12. Google+ Local let me put in two phone numbers, so we put in both a 1-800 number and the regular number. Should we remove the 1-800 number until we are sure that we won't be penalized for it?

I'd recommend putting the "regular" number as the main phone, and the 1-800 as the alternate phone number. Or, just don't use the 1-800 at all. Consider this: if the visitors seeing that phone number are locally-based, why do they need the 1-800 number? Seeing a 1-800 number can sometimes turn off a potential customer from calling as they may think that they're being directed to a call center as opposed to the actual retail location.

13. If I run two businesses from the same address, could I simply add a suite number to differentiate?

Yes, but you'll also need to have different phone numbers for each business, even if it's just a forwarding number. Google uses phone number as their unique identifier for the business so they will merge businesses with the same phone number and assume it's a data error instead of two separate businesses. I have seen this happen with clients in the past, and it just can't be fixed without two different phone numbers.

14. What tools/software would you recommend for finding citations? What do you recommend for finding directories that have citations?

We use Whitespark's
Local Citation Finder. They also offer a citation building service, but the tool is for people who'd like to build the citations themselves.

We also use Google Alerts quite a bit - toss in your key phrases, set up Google alerts, watch the potential citation sources come to you!

But that's really just the foundation of the citation building campaign. Once you've done that, start going through the ideas in my presentation to level up what you already have.

If you'd like me to write out a more detailed post about how we use Google Alerts for citation building, please leave a note in the comments and I'll put it together.

15. This reminds me of normal link building. Do you value these citations as much as links?

It is very similar in many ways. It's only the content that varies - I want that full NAP in there, and ideally a link if we can get it.

I do value these citations just as much as links. I also find that many of these citation sources have real people who read them and will check out the business as a result. I try to avoid building links for the sake of links - our goal is always to get a link or content piece where an actual human being will see it and hopefully check out the client's business.

16. I have 3 addresses for my company, but one main office. What is the best thing for me to do?

Depends on what those other addresses are. Are they actual places that people can go? If no, don't use them and try to clean up any citations you already have. Focus on the address where real people can go.

17. Does a citation need to be in any special format? If it's listed in a blog post, can it just be Company Name, Address 1, City, State, Zip in line in the text?

That's all you need! Just make sure that the NAP corresponds to your "master" information, including commas, dashes, number signs, St vs Street, and so on. Consistency is key with citations.

18. For more "old school" clients in older industries who don't believe in social, for example a construction equipment rental company that is B2B, how have you gone about actually selling any of these strategies to them? To suggest sponsoring a bull, setting up a webcam, getting listed on a parade page, etc. would probably get me thrown out of their office. Should the focus then just be on the easy citations and the local Chambers? Nothing too fancy?

I'd say start there until you have their trust. Then you can suggest some of the wacky stuff. If you have clients who are more open to doing different things, use these ideas with them, write up a case study, and present it to your old school client.

I also find that the old school clients aren't resistant to new things - they just want to be sure that these things will work for them in terms of growing their business. It takes time and trust.

19. We have multiple offices and we have local office pages as well as our overall website. The detailed office page is more directly tied to the local information (specific addresses, phones, etc). Should we list the detailed office page as our main URL, or the main website?

Use the detailed office page, especially if you have hundreds of locations. Then the potential customer who follows that link is taken right away to the location information that's right for them.

20. Another situation I have found, is a client that only uses one phone number for multiple locations. I have created six physical Google+ Local pages for his six different locations, but all used the same phone number. Google and Bing don't really like this.

No, they sure don't. You'll need to get separate phone numbers for each location as soon as possible and change your citations to reflect the change. As I said earlier, phone number is the unique identifier and if multiple locations (especially in separate cities!) have the same phone number, you're going to have a difficult time.

21. What if your address and name on ALL sites are consistent but different from postal service?

As long as the changes aren't so different as to cause confusion for visitors or map markers you should be fine.

For example, many addresses in Montreal are formatted differently due to language differences:

3927, Rue Saint-Denis (on the website)

3927 Rue Saint Denis (Google's information)

While both look the same, the differences in the comma and dash could potentially cause issues. If you already have a Google+ Local page, look at that address and use it as your NAP information.

22. If I have multiple versions of my NAP already listed. Do you have a quick method of finding them?

Just lots of searching. Search for your business name, address (formatted as many different ways as you can think of), phone number etc. Once you find a "bad" citation, set up a Google Alert for the bad information in case more pop up later.

23. Is it still important/as important to build citations to businesses that are service area businesses? (Plumbers, etc)?

It's the most important thing you can do, especially for businesses like plumbers.

Thanks again for all the great questions! I hope I was able to help. If you still need information or have a question that I haven't addressed here, please leave them in the comments below.

About DiTomaso —
One of Dana's favourite things to do is to turn a lot of marketing bullshit into real strategies to grow your business. Ten plus years in the industry means that Dana has seen it all. In her spare time, Dana drinks tea and yells at the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

Well done Dana, Your each and every points define of real situation when we faced it. Yes "NAP" is very important for our visitors, this is the easiest way to get visitors. I like your every thoughts which you shared with us.

Hey danaditomaso!However we were not at webinar, but your informational article based on your conversion is excellent. Over all above enlisted all questions are clear with local marketing with citation source.Thanks for sharing with US!

Hi Dana, Great article and easy to understand. As somebody who has a hard time explaining to clients and account managers the value and reasoning behind citations, it's great to now have a page full of comprehensive citation goodness.

My only query, and something that wasn't entirely elaborated on in point 15 was the enigma that is service area business. The local plumber or carpet cleaner has become the vain of my existence and as Google has tightened the strings on 'Service Areas' and hidden addresses, citations is something that has been a little confusing.

At the moment we are simply procure citations which allow for the truncated address, is there another option?

Hi Dana,For reference my question is regarding service area businesses (which don't serve people at their address) who must hide their address according to the guidelines. The address on Google Local appears truncated, with just their Suburb. How do you approach citations for these businesses?

Thanks for the clarification. In those cases, I still do citation building as the office address. Even if they're a plumber, they usually have some sort of office address (that isn't their house) that we can use for their "office address". Generally, people call these types of businesses, not visit, so I'm less concerned about someone actually walking into the business.No, it doesn't match up with what Google has on their listing but it still has power in terms of real people seeing that person's business information and it does help with their citation. Google knows their address, they just won't show it. :)

Excellent points on Local SEO. When we moved, we found it helped to update all our citations first, then to wait for a sign that Google had crawled these citations. The sign for us was a drop in our local search rankings. From there all we had to do was update our Google+ Business Page and within 2-3 weeks we were back up in the rankings.I wrote a post on our blog detailing our move and our approach to updating the local listings.

I just wanted to make a few notes here (just based on personal experience):

- Using same phone number for different listings IS possible even if they are located at the same address, as long as you keep the business names completely different, as well as the categories. Adding more citations for each of the businesses would help each of the listings strengthen its position as a unique entity.

- Using virtual office: the reasoning of Google not to allow PO boxes is exactly the same as their reasoning not to allow virtual offices - because their goal is when the user searches for a business (and if the location is displayed), when the user visits the business (in the set working hours) they will be able to meet face to face with a business rep. In 99.9 out of 100 cases with virtual offices there is no representative at the location at all (working) times. Simply using the virtual office for meeting purposes would not be enough for Google. A way to overcome this might be to hide the street address.

- Small difference between different NAPs (for example St vs. Street) - Mike Blumenthal laid out very well why such minor inconsistencies are generally not a big deal and you should definitely not sweat over them.

- Using tools for research: LCF is definitely great, but in many cases you need reinforcements and doing all the work manually could be a serious chore. I use: GetListed.org, Yext's Local Search Scorecard, Bright Local's Citation Tracker, SweetIQ's platform.

1. You can, it's entirely possible. I have seen instances for two companies to get merged, even with citation profiles. I really would advise against it and forwarding phone numbers are cheap.

2. Perhaps this is a difference between virtual offices in my experience vs others. The virtual offices I'm familiar with are the ones where you rent an actual office in a larger office and therefore could potentially be there quite a lot of the time. The ones you're talking about sound entirely like a fake office where you don't even have a desk.

3. There can be serious issues if you're not careful, though. For example, Edmonton uses a grid system although it's 99% only NW for addresses, so many people don't use them or write Northwest. These differences can cause you just not to show up on the map at all (in the case of Apple Maps) or be placed with an incorrect map marker (on Google Maps). So I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to consistency.

Thanks for the post. Great, straight forward answers here to some common local questions. I'm currently running into many of these problems with a client. Tracking numbers on directories, a single number for multiple locations, etc. This has yet to be a major Google problem (though time will tell), but has become a nightmare for the smaller directories that do require phone verification.

This is kind of a late response to the article but I hope someone can answer.I have a company in China however my target market is USA, UK, CAN, etc. (English speaking).My NAP is in China (real office not virtual).What should I do to target local traffic from my target regions? And I do not have an office in any of these regions.

I'm still paying attention! :)As you won't have a real office, you won't be able to show up on the map for any local searches. I'd recommend providing locally-focused content, and do work to get mentions through many of the venues that I mentioned in the webinar.

It helps to ensure uniform listings throughout the Internet and disseminate that correct info to websites such as on Google+ Local, Bing Local, Four Square, IYP websites (such as Yellow Pages, Super Pages, City Search, Yelp, Insider Pages, Yellow Book, etc.), Manta, Merchant Circle and Facebook to name just a few.~Scott

I'm so glad I circled back to read this post. It answered a critical question for us because we run two totally separate businesses out of the same address. Fortunately, from the beginning we have had completely separate phone numbers so it seems like all of our existing citations in Yelp, Manta, Hot Frog, etc. are all okay. Now we just have to work on getting more of them. Rand's WBF helped reinforce the notion that you should always go for complete NAP in every listing, plus a link if you can get it. All great advice. Thanks!

What a timely post. We're actually in the process of building citations and all these information you've provided help a lot. One thing we follow in our current efforts though is that we keep every listing consistent (for NAP) and we keep our number local. Thanks again for sharing this Q&A.

We use Google alerts for each our clients to find citation sources. We setup alerts for their target keywords and for the name of their competitors so that we get notified each time a competitor creates a citation on a site we haven't taken advantage of yet.

"Hut ab" as I would say in German. Thanks for all your work. But do you have any information or idea, if there is anything different when you have a location in China? Are there any special tools you can use? Except for local directories and so on.I think yelp has no options for China, or am I wrong?

True. What I meant is that every mention on a reputable site (like the ones in the presentation) is a good thing. If you are a "national" business, you still will have people searching for whatever it is that you do in your city and that's where these citations will help.

Awesome article. Number 7 presented a problem for us as we need to track phone conversions in addition to web. However, rather than abandoning the idea we actually added a java snippet that switches the number to the tracking phone number after the page loads. This way the true number is still reflected in the schema and the NAP is consistent across sites/citation sources. Great info, thanks for the piece!